


it's the closest thing to assault (when all eyes are on you)

by twitchytweek



Series: Tweek Week 2019 [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Dissociation, Gory Imagery, I didn't intend for this to be a sequel originally oops, I'm just very attached to my singer songwriter au, M/M, also this time around it's a bit more shippy, also warnings for:, and also Tweek's very mentally ill coded, and by that I mean "author is trying his best to not explicitly shout that this boy ain't sane", anyway hi I stretched this prompt a LOT but hopefully y'all still enjoy, but that isn't required reading, but y'know, fellas is it gay to fantasize abt smoochin your good pal, implied self harm, nah thats normal bro behavior, sort of sequel to yesterday's piece, that's ok tho, they're not together or anything, we love our mentally unstable son
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 08:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchytweek/pseuds/twitchytweek
Summary: Craig had left his notebook over. It was perched on his little piano bench— more a stool or ottoman, but benches were uncomfortable anyway— and it watched him plainly, beckoning for Tweek to lift it again and do something with it. Or maybe for him to play; his hands were twitching in the absence of something to do, and drums were loud, guitar required focus, bass could be improved, ukulele was fun and easy.But all he could really do was stare back at Craig's songbook. It made him smile; he used to be so private about his journal and leaving it unattended, to the point of them fighting over it. Which Tweek still felt awful about, but their reconciliation was sweet.Besides, maintaining a bit of secrecy and distance was vital to him, too.





	it's the closest thing to assault (when all eyes are on you)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Tweek Week, it's ya boi, back at it again with seriously stretching these prompts lmao. I actually didn't intend for this to be a sequel to my first thing, it just kinda? happened? and i had a lot of fun writing it even if it did keep me up until sunrise. there are some little details i want to add— the specifics of their implied past fight, the actual breakdown of who does what for the videos, their first meeting, etc— but I think I'll save those things for possible future chapters/one-shots. hopefully y'all enjoy this!!! make sure to yell at me in the comments, i love seeing what you guys think :D

It felt awfully boring to stay stuck in the same body for an eternity. The same face, the same limitations, the same location for an entire lifetime. Even more aggravating was the fact that there was very little to be done about that problem; plastic surgery was expensive and scary, Tweek couldn't _willpower_ his way into another social class, and moving was hard to do, impossible until he hit eighteen. That didn't stop him from getting an apartment by nineteen, at least five cities between him and his parents some much-needed space to breathe. 

But, still. He didn't enjoy having a body he had to learn how to _cope_ with. More than that— he didn't like there being something so intrinsic about himself he couldn't exert control over. So he pushed that energy outward; he scribbled ideal tattoos on his arms and thighs over old scars and cellulite, he wrote himself into the stories he wished he could live, he acted. Getting into someone else's head was liberating in a way he couldn't easily describe or explain, but when you knew it, you _knew_. All these lives he got to sample without permanently altering his own.

His own was better, now, freer and more kind. People liked him— that was new, that was exciting— and he had value. He could do things, he could bend the world to his whim, even if it was his own tiny corner of the world. There were people who watched him, who loved him without knowing a thing about who he was. 

That was pretty enticing, too, in the same way it was scary. He'd love to sample all these other lives people constructed for him. He'd love to be some kind of cryptid, have his outsides match how very _not human_ he felt inside. Or maybe pure energy, an unquantifiable concept that toed the border between existing and not. 

He'd love to be anywhere else. Everywhere else. Spread himself into a million tiny pieces and set them all in different towns and states and countries. Tug and pry himself apart. He wondered if aliens bled green or blue. He wondered if zombies bled black. He wondered if he could bleed out every rotten thought and impulse and secret and if anything would be left of him after, if everything that made up his being was that dark, inky tar that dissolved every thought into _bad, bad, wrong, badwrong dirtybad_. 

His arms felt sore and raw— only then did he realize he'd been dragging his nails up and down the skin, and it was now pink and sharp, sharper than it should be. He was spikes all over. And he was _bleeding_. 

He should have felt… Something. Scared, maybe, or concerned. Yes, those were things people felt when they were injured. Those were the normal reactions. But Tweek wasn't… He didn't fit that. 

He should get a drink. Drinks helped, and his mouth felt dry. Maybe caffeine would help him focus. 

Luckily, some abstract form of him in the past tense had left a half-full french press in the fridge, perfect for an iced mocha. He watched the coffee and creamer and cocoa powder swirl and blend together until it resembled chocolate milk over ice, and wondered what it must feel like to dissolve in that way. Unsure of how or when his legs carried himself back to his couch, he sipped the cold drink, forcing himself back into his body with the sharp cold.

It was too quiet. The silence snuck its way into his lungs, filled them with cotton, blocked every airway. It pressed against his skull until it buckled under the force and all his head was filled with empty. Oblivious to how it happened, the speaker crackled to life and the comforting weight of his phone rested in his palm, his thumb pressed to the play button still. Time kept blurring like that.

The music soaked into the cotton that had replaced his lungs and through it, Tweek could breathe again. He didn't have to be a person to feel and hear it, and he could barely make any sense of the words but the voice itself was pleasant. He liked how raw it felt, and the way he could pinpoint the emotions behind it without even once being able to name them. By the time he finished his coffee, he felt a little more like a physical being than a few fibers of an ambiguous, nebulous something, and that was enough for him to be something resembling productive. 

Craig had left his notebook over. It was perched on his little piano bench— more a stool or ottoman, but benches were uncomfortable anyway— and it watched him plainly, beckoning for Tweek to lift it again and do something with it. Or maybe for him to play; his hands were twitching in the absence of something to do, and drums were loud, guitar required focus, bass could be improved, ukulele was fun and easy.

But all he could really do was stare back at Craig's songbook. It made him smile; he used to be so private about his journal and leaving it unattended, to the point of them fighting over it. Which Tweek still felt awful about, but their reconciliation was sweet. Craig's lips were sweeter.

He furrowed his brows, and shook the thought from his head. Craig had said something about coming by to pick it up, or to keep working on songs, something, around some time. Tweek snatched his phone back up and checked the texts between them. He got through about five before the door to his apartment opened and he flinched so hard, his soul briefly left his body.

"Honey, I'm home," Craig taunted. Tweek wheeled around and _glared_ with all the bitterness he could muster— which, considering he'd just been stuck on the idea of kissing Craig again, wasn't much.

"I regret giving you a spare key," he huffed. But any sour expression quickly melted into a smile. "I assume you're here for this?" He tossed the journal towards Craig, making sure to secure the strap on it so the pages wouldn't fly open. Craig caught it easily. 

He pushed the door shut behind him and slouched against it, flipping the book open. Tweek watched him eagerly, trying to pick up on every slight change in expression; it was hard when Craig looked so blurry from far away, but it didn't deter him any. He wanted him to see that he'd done things. He was foggy and certain that the only parts of him that were present were his hands and eyes, but he'd done things. Craig knew well by now how hard that was.

"You wrote," he said. "A _lot_." Incredulously, and Tweek felt… _good_, that he could surprise Craig still. 

"I did," he said, trying and failing to be nonchalant. "I don't know if it's any good, but I tried that thing you told me about, just picking an emotion or concept or idea and focusing on it, and it helped a lot." He dropped himself onto the armrest of the couch, leaning back until he was almost-upside-down, peering at Craig with his head on the cushions. "Sit! I wanna hear what you think."

Craig obliged easily, careful to brush Tweek's hair out of the way before settling beside him. With a soft grunt of effort, Tweek readjusted so they were properly sitting together. Almost properly; Tweek had his legs folded beneath him, and he was bouncing in place. 

"Some of these sound like they're telling stories," Craig noted. Tweek leaned over to read the page he was looking at; their arms were pressed together and Tweek suddenly remembered he _had_ those. 

"Well, yeah, I uh… Some of them were kinda inspired by roles or ideas I had thought of," he said with a dismissive flappy hand gesture. "Interesting parts I played in highschool plays, or voice acting gigs I tried out for, or just… What I _wanted_ those parts to be."

"Right," Craig said with a knowing nod. "I always forget you're a theater nerd."

Tweek stuck out his tongue. "No you." Properly reading this time, he tried to recall what exactly his intent had been when writing. "This one was some uh. I dunno, absurdist play? The whole point of it was stretching mundane concepts to the extreme dark end, and I thought that was a fun space to play around in. One fun thing about it was the repetition and same-ness, the, uh… Monotony! That. A lot of it felt like it was trying to hide the meaning of it all, and then there was this thing at the end that just… It strung it all together."

"So it was a confusing mess," Craig kindly clarified on his behalf.

Tweek laughed. "Yeah, a bit. But specific scenes were really neat, and I used one of those there. I stretched it just a _little_, though."

"Well, naturally."

"And then others are based on drawings I did without really thinking of them. I just got wrapped up in what would make this make sense and… went for it." Tweek pointed helpfully towards the little doodles in the margins— faces full of eyes, or melting, or with a part of their head cut into like a slice of cake.

"I always forget how much you draw. Have you ever considered animating a video for one of our songs?" _Our songs, our songs_. Tweek forcefully rebooted his brain.

"I mean, sure, but that sort of thing takes a while and my animation skills are rusty. I mostly did little animated drawings or flipbooks, nothing too fancy." He gnawed on his lip a bit, trying to puzzle out what song would be fun for that sort of project.

Craig patted his head and left his hand there. Tweek couldn't be sure if it helped or harmed his attempts to convince himself it was attached to the rest of his body. "No pressure. I just think it would be fun to do something with it. I mean, you have all these hobbies and everyone just knows you as that dude who posts music on YouTube. You deserve attention for the other things you do."

Both. Both? "Maybe eventually. I've considered doing little skits before."

Craig scoffed. "Count me out. I couldn't act to save my life. We were forced to take either art or theater in highschool and I hated every second of it."

"Well of course _you_ did. It's fine, I can play multiple roles on my own, or get someone else to help me, no problem." Craig's hand fell from his head so he could turn the page, and Tweek bit down on the impulse to grab it back and tore it to pieces with his mindteeth.

"Have you thought about instrumentals for any of these yet?" 

"Not really. Though, something I meant to bring up—" he readjusted again, sitting cross-legged. Their thighs were pressed together, and even that much contact made him short circuit, regardless of how often Craig and him were casually, platonically affectionate. Touch was strange. He didn't get a lot of it. "I want you to try playing bass in one of the videos."

"Why?" Craig levelled him with a confused look. "You can play it fine."

"No," Tweek pouted, "you don't get it. I want people to actually see you as a part of this— we're a _team_, and you don't get near as much appreciation." Smiling felt weird. And he did it _so often_ around Craig, he couldn't help it. "You do a lot for me. I want other people to see that, too. I'd still be doing boring covers on my own if you hadn't come around."

"They weren't boring!" Craig rushed to say, and Tweek quirked an unconvinced brow. "They're how I found you. And you have a real skill, you can play all these instruments, and you can _sing_— I've never been able to sound like anything other than a cat stuck in a garbage disposal, but you, you're… You're talented. You deserve all the attention you get."

"That's still not the point. So are you, so do you. You've helped me a lot." 

"You were talented before I found you, and you'd still be if I hadn't come along," Craig insisted.

"But you make it _better_." Tweek turned himself so he was facing Craig and grabbed his shoulders to make him do the same. "I chose you to be my writer for a reason. Play with me. Let this be our thing. Get out of your shell a little, let yourself have fun with it."

"Would saying I don't like cameras help my case?" Craig tried weakly. His eyes weren't meeting his; they were a little lower. Tweek, upon realizing he'd been biting his lip again, let it go. 

"It wouldn't, because I know you too well. You don't like being _in front of_ the camera." He shook Craig a little, the best plea he could manage until the words freed themselves from the sticky cotton still clinging to the edges of his brain. "It'll be fun! 'Sides, when we get famous you'll have to be in front of cameras all the time anyway."

"I'll go into Witness Protection," Craig threatened.

"You won't," Tweek said. Promised. "You wouldn't leave me." He didn't have to push beyond that; in the way Craig rolled his eyes and flipped him off and called him a _"fucking sap"_, Tweek knew he wore him down. 

The video turned out fantastic. Tweek had picked up a lot about editing from Craig, and with Craig's eye for interesting camera shots and some careful rigging involving at least one illegal drone, he had plenty of fun material to work with. Neither of them mentioned how their walk through the woods ended with them pressed so close together Tweek felt like coffee and cream and cocoa blended together. They usually didn't acknowledge it after. It was just a part of their friendship. Normal for them. Comfortable.

Tweek pretended his mind wasn't stuck on the idea of Craig, and how easily he made him feel real again. He wrote and he played music and he re-covered the first song of Craig's he'd ever seen, the one he submitted before when Tweek was desperate to find a songwriter. Tearing it into pieces only to put it back together in a new form made him appreciate it more. He wondered where Craig's head had been at when writing it. He wondered if he felt any happier now with Tweek around.


End file.
